Unqueer Duck

In the campaign of 1934, enormous political hoopla was made over a proposed unemployment census which would have furnished a juicy cluster of local census-taking jobs for each Democratic candidate to dangle before his district workers on election day. In the 1936 campaign, charges of corruption in Relief were part of Alf Landon's ammunition. But as items of political history, these "scandals" compare to the great WPA controversy of 1938, as peanuts to a watermelon.

That WPA has an influence on politics, only a congenital ostrich would deny. Whether it plays politics is the issue. Last week the Senate Campaign Expenditures Committee passed two solemn judgments. It ruled that: 1) the ultimate author of WPA benefits, Franklin Roosevelt, when as Head of the Democratic Party he addresses the whole country (as he did in a heart-to-heart radio talk fortnight ago) is above criticism in appealing for votes; 2) Aubrey Williams, Deputy WPAdministrator was not above criticism in his appeal last fortnight to the Workers Alliance (reliefers' union) to ''keep your friends in power." (TIME, July 4).*

"There was nothing political in what I said, nor were any political implications intended," Mr. Williams wrote to the Committee last week. To newsmen he explained he had thought he was talking off-the-record. He added: "I think I would be a very queer duck if I did not do this sort of thing."

Crowding Aubrey Williams out of the headlines last week came his chief, Harry Hopkins, with a detailed answer to detailed reports, by Scripps-Howard Reporter Thomas L. Stokes, of WPA pressurizing in Kentucky for the renomination of Senate Majority Leader Barkley. Mr. Hopkins had sent some of his people into Kentucky to check up on Reporter Stokes's allegations. Out of 22 alleged improprieties, only two had been substantiated: 1) A WPA county supervisor, Lee Garden, had distributed political registration cards among WPA workers; 2) A WPA district foreman, Cleve Keeney, had told WPAsters under him they "were going to have to support Barkley if they stayed on WPA."

Mr. Hopkins said that the State WPAdministrator had been told to "take the necessary punitive action."* Any further proven charge of political coercion would be summarily dealt with. "But we will be equally prompt in exposing any accusations trumped up to serve the political ends, of those who are opposed to this Administration."

Tom Stokes, regarded a reliable reporter and heretofore, if anything, a pro-New Dealer (though the Scripps-Howard chain-papers for which he works have now turned critical of the Administration), replied: "It is perhaps natural that our reports should disagree. The motives were different. . . .

"WPA officials and workers, when confronted by WPA investigators, naturally see over the shoulders of the latter none other than Mr. Hopkins in Washington, the man who controls their jobs. It is only human for them to say 'it isn't so.'"

*The Committee last week issued a nine-point questionnaire for all Senate aspirants to answer. Sample question: ''Have any public funds or political patronage, with your knowledge and consent, been used by others in behalf of your nomination or election to the United States Senate?" Only by his answering "Yes"could investigation of a candidate be precipitated.

*State Administrator George H. Goodman last week said he had "warned" Mr. Keeney.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.